14 DAY TRIAL // The Google Street View Wi-Fi saga continues with an investigation in Spain. A judge has ordered an official criminal investigation into the matter. Google representatives will also have to go before the court in October.
Spain joins a long list of countries investigation Google over the issue. Several months ago Google admitted that it had, unknowingly it says, collected snippets of public Wi-Fi communications with its Street View cars.
Google Street View program has cars roaming cities and major roads photographing the surroundings for the online service. Street View enables users to view 360 degree imagery of various cities around the world.
However, until recently, Street View cars were also fitted with Wi-Fi equipment. The gear was supposed to log just the IDs of wireless networks in the region in order to improve location services for mobile devices.
Regular GPS can take several seconds to provide a location, especially in crowded cities, and many phone makers rely on wireless network location data to provide faster positioning.
Due to an error, Google says, code which captured payload data, actual communication data, from wireless networks was included in the software used by the Street View cars.
In total, Google collected 600 Gigabytes worth of payload data from all over the world. Google revealed this after an internal investigation of the software uncovered the error.
The company is now under investigation in several countries over the matter. Some have already been completed, both UK and Australian regulators imposed no sanctions.
The UK investigators said they found no evidence of private information among the data they reviewed. Police investigations continue in the UK though.
Following a complaint from a Spanish organization, the court started an investigation of its own. The court will also hold a hearing in October to hear Google's side. Breaking the Spanish communication interception law can carry a four-year sentence.